1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a fastening plate for securing door-panel snap pins to an automobile's interior door and side panels, which are normally made of hard fiber materials. The snap pins can then be inserted into holes in an automobile's body to fix the interior panel to the body. The fastening plate includes a holding plate offset above the door panel and provided with a keyhole shaped aperture or clearance opened on one side for the introduction of the neck portion of a door panel snap pin. The fastening plate also includes a pair of support plates positioned on opposite sides of the holding plate and connected to the holding plate by two side walls. The support plates include several claws stamped out of the support plate and bent at about right angles to the support plate in order to anchor the fastening plate to the door panel.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Door panel snap pins have been used to fix cloth-covered or laminated interior automobile panels to the automobile's body wall or inside door wall. Such a snap pin is provided at one end with a thin head and a neck which are ordinarily inserted into a tapered keyhole formed in an interior panel to thereby anchor the snap pin within the tapered hole area. A circular support and sealing surface is located at the end of the snap pin's neck opposite the head. Beyond the circular support are several conically converging elastic legs which can be pressed into corresponding holes in an automobile's body or door wall. The elastic legs include projecting edges which reach behind the rim of the hole and thus securely anchor the snap pin, and therefore the panel, to the body wall.
Instead of providing the cardboard lining of the panels with keyhole shaped apertures, it has been found advantageous on a variety of grounds to use fastening plates which include claws or cramps that can deeply burrow into the fibers of the door panel and secure the plate to the panel. Normally the diameter of the circular clearance in such fastening plates is significantly larger than the neck diameter of the snap pin. This arrangement allows the snap pin to slide radially when the tip of the snap pin is introduced into the fastening hole. Therefore, the snap pin can align with the fastening hole without being displaced from the fastening plate.
It has been found that fastening plates are particularly useful when the spacing between the interior panel and the body wall varies at different fastening sights. In some circumstances, the height of a fastening plate above the cardboard will also vary with that spacing. In other instances, the length of a snap pin's neck will be dimensioned to match the thickness of a panel's cardboard base. In most cases, the fastening plate is substantially thinner than the base of a panel. Thus, if it is desired to hold the same or similar snap pins with a fastening plate, rather than with holes in the panel's base, the snap pin will normally have too much play at the aperture in the fastening plate and because of its weight will tilt downward. This downward tilting makes it difficult to align the tips of the snap pin into the holes in the automobile's body or door walls.